


halfway out the door

by IridiumPhoenix



Series: scp au [4]
Category: Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - SCP Foundation, Arson, Dehumanization, Gen, Unethical Experimentation, a little bit of violence as per usual
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-11
Updated: 2021-01-11
Packaged: 2021-03-15 01:21:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28680282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IridiumPhoenix/pseuds/IridiumPhoenix
Summary: It was a rude awakening, learning that the world was full of gods and monsters. He thinks he’s adjusted fairly well.The only thing he can’t get used to is how human some of them look.
Relationships: GeorgeNotFound & Sapnap (Video Blogging RPF), Karl Jacobs & Sapnap
Series: scp au [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2076192
Comments: 10
Kudos: 51





	halfway out the door

**Author's Note:**

> just the one au note before we begin this time! george is an antimeme - forgettable turned up to 11, basically.
> 
> title is from Boreas by The Oh Hellos. it doesn't have much to do with this fic honestly, but i was jamming to it while writing.

“Number?”

The man on the other side of the protective screen doesn’t even look up as he says this, continuing to read whatever shitty magazine he’s hiding just out of view of the cameras. His voice is a bored, monotone mumble. Sapnap, on the other hand, is getting increasingly frantic.

“I- uh, I know I wrote it down somewhere-” He’s rifling through the many pockets on the uniform they gave him. “Sorry, can I just… can I just give you my name?” The paper had to be here somewhere, how else did they expect him to memorize a 10-digit long ID?

The man finally glances up and gives Sapnap a partly disdainful, partly pitying look. “You new here?”

“Yeah, it’s my first day and-”

“I don’t care.” The man cuts him off flatly. Well, someone’s touchy. “Your number should be stitched on your shirt. Idiot-proof, or at least it’s  _ supposed _ to be.” He gives Sapnap another look, this time firmly on the annoyed side.

Sapnap cranes his neck downward and squints at the tiny stitching. It’s not quite big enough to be fully legible, but he can make some educated guesses and figure it out, right? 

Three tries later, the man finally enters the correct number into his computer. Each try sees his face darken more and more, to the point where Sapnap is getting concerned about his safety. This guy doesn’t look like the most intimidating man in the world, but this place is supposed to be full of monsters and murderers. Anyone could be a threat. 

The man walks off and returns carrying a heavy looking box. He taps a code into it quickly and begins pulling items out of it, sliding them under the protective glass. No, not just items, weapons. A lot of them.

A gun. A second, larger gun. A taser. A baton. Two vicious looking knives. A third gun. A smoke grenade. Sapnap picks them up as they’re delivered to him and numbly slides them into his myriad pockets and holsters. 

Box fully emptied, the man returns it to the back and goes back to reading his magazine. Sapnap stays at the window. After a few moments of uncomfortable silence, the man lets out an extremely long, extremely aggravated sigh. “Can I help you?” He snaps out tersely. 

“Could I have a lighter?”

“Absolutely not. Get out.”

Time to begin his new job.

\---------

_ Sapnap was a damn good arsonist. The best in the business, at least by his own account. After all, he’d been racking up job experience since he was barely in his teens.  _

_ Once the local organized crime took notice of his skills, his career absolutely skyrocketed. Anyone who was anyone in the underground knew that if they needed a showy cover up or some evidence destroyed, Sapnap was the one to go to. He was getting paid obscene amounts of money to do what he loved, and he couldn’t have been happier. _

_ Until the fire that changed everything. _

_ He doesn’t know who sold out who, what alliances were betrayed and what friends were stabbed in the back. Perhaps it was all just a matter of bad timing, one loose end ruining the whole operation. All he knows is what one of his temporary coworkers screamed at him when the building was already a towering inferno- _

“Oh god, there was someone inside.”

_ \- and his world crumbled like a house of matchsticks. _

_ Sapnap was a damn good arsonist. As it turned out, he was an even better fall guy. _

_ None of his employers went to jail. None of them even stood trial. When it came down to it, after the murder investigation, the interrogations, the halfhearted defense in court, everything - Sapnap was the one to lose everything. All because someone failed to clear the target before he lit it ablaze. _

_ And when it came down to it, he knew he deserved his punishment for what he had done that night. _

_ Six months’ jail time later and he was sitting in an armored van with a row of other inmates. No one would tell him where they were going, or what was happening, or answer with anything other than a boot to the gut and a sharp “You’ll shut up if you know what’s good for you.” Sapnap was tired, hurt, and scared. He had a feeling it wasn’t going to get any better. And once he heard what the man at the end of the journey had to say, he knew he was right. _

“The SCP Foundation has bought out your prison sentences. You are all now considered legally dead. You are now the property of the Foundation and as such you will be put to work in our facilities. If you cooperate, you will be at a minimum amount of danger. Failure to comply will be met with immediate punishment. Be grateful for this opportunity at a new beginning.”

_ Sapnap was a damn good arsonist. And now he was no one at all. _

\---------

Sapnap spends most of his time guarding one specific scientist. He gathers that she’s pretty high up on the management chain, so he ends up standing outside important meetings a lot. Most of the time it’s a fairly quiet assignment - she isn’t put in too much danger because of her value, so neither is he. It’s what has prevented him from going the way of almost everyone else he arrived here with.

They’d been told that cooperating would save them. They’d been lied to.

Still, Sapnap can’t really complain. He’s managed to survive for a lot longer than he’d expected when he first found out about what this place really is. It was a rude awakening, learning that the world was full of gods and monsters. He thinks he’s adjusted fairly well.

The only thing he can’t get used to is how  _ human _ some of them look.

It’s a quiet afternoon when he talks to his first SCP. He’s standing outside a door, as usual, clicking a snap on his vest open and closed, open and closed, wishing he had a lighter to fidget with instead. Much as he appreciates the peacefulness of his assignment, it gets pretty boring. He just wishes he had something to do.

He immediately regrets that wish when the emergency lights switch on and alarms start blaring.

Even though the rooms here are thoroughly soundproofed, he can still hear surprised shouts from behind the door he’s guarding. It’s not really part of protocol, but he tests the handle lightly to make sure it’s properly locked. These rooms are supposed to lock from the inside automatically during containment breaches, but it wouldn’t be the first time something has malfunctioned. The door remains shut, so he turns on his heel and faces the long hallway, one hand on his taser.

It’s hard to even hear himself think over the alarms, but Sapnap thinks he can make out the sounds of a scuffle nearby. No shots fired yet, so he remains at the door. If they find out he abandoned his post in the middle of an emergency, there’s no telling what will happen to him. Probably ritually sacrificed to some kind of squid god for science purposes, knowing his luck.

The alarms finally shut off. Strangely, though, the sounds of struggle continue. Curiosity piqued, Sapnap glances around quickly then heads in that direction. Maybe they need some backup? 

The scene he arrives at is both better and worse than he was expecting.

Instead of the blood and destruction he was expecting, there is simply a body on the floor. He’s wearing the uniform assigned to humanoid SCPs. He’s twitching as two guards beat the shit out of him. One more guard, higher ranked by the look of his insignia, leans against a wall watching passively. It reminds Sapnap of scenes he saw in high school before he dropped out - the bullies ganging up on the most vulnerable target, like predators singling out the weakest of a pack before taking it down.

“What’s happening here?” That came out louder than intended. The violent guards stop to look at him, giving him a better view of the person on the ground. He rolls over slightly, coughing wetly. Just a normal looking man with dark hair, bruised to hell and with blood trickling down his chin.

The observer nods slightly at him. “This one thought it could slip out during the containment breach, crafty little shit. We’re lucky we found it before it could go too far.”

“Yeah, but why are you still hitting him? It looks like you’ve incapacitated him already…” Sapnap cuts himself off, seeing the smirks directed at him.

The observer chuckles slightly. “Listen, kid. Are you new here?” Sapnap starts to answer but the man talks over him. “Sometimes the boys need to let off a little steam, get out the anger a little, you know? Perfectly natural. And this thing-” he gestures to the man on the ground- “it’s the perfect punching bag. Got some power where you forget about it if you don’t see it, so nobody will notice if it’s a little more banged up than usual. Hell, nobody will even notice it, as long as it’s stuck in its cell.”

“Wanna get a few hits in?” One of the other guards says. He digs the toe of his boot roughly into the SCP’s side, eliciting a gasp of pain.

Sapnap clenches his fists tightly.

“Yeah, I think I do.”

\---------

His door finally opens again a day later. A day without food, water, or any kind of human contact. It’s the scientist he normally shadows. There’s not a hint of emotion on her face as she speaks.

“I had high hopes for you, you know.” There’s a new guard outside the door. He’s been replaced already. “You followed orders well, you seemed to have a good head on your shoulders, so what happened?” Her mask finally cracks. Underneath, he can see that same pity-disdain as the man had shown on his first day. 

His voice is hoarse as he tries to speak. “I- I was- ”

“Save it. You’re being reassigned. I tried to keep you, but they insisted on a punishment. You didn’t really think you could assault an officer and get away with it, did you?”

She starts to walk away and Sapnap finally finds his voice. “Where?”

Her footsteps stop for a moment. “Site [REDACTED] .” And then she leaves.

He’s heard about that place. They say the SCPs there practically run the joint, the fatality rate for D-Class is twice as high as other facilities, and half the administration there is anomalous in some way. It’s as good as a death sentence.

They pack him into another armored van the next day. Halfway through the trip, when he’s down to 157 bottles of beer on the wall out of 500, he abruptly becomes aware that he’s not the only one sat on the cold steel benches.

“Hello?”

He almost jumps out of his skin at the soft voice. Glancing around wildly, his eyes finally land on a form sitting across from him. The figure is strangely blurry, but after several seconds of repeated blinking it comes into focus as the SCP from the hallway. He still looks horrible, face bruised and swollen.

“When did you get here?!” Sapnap tries to calm down his racing heart, taking several deep breaths.

The man shrugs. “After you took down the guys in the hallway, everyone just forgot about me. It happens a lot. Then I heard about you, and I decided to come along.” He’s strangely nonchalant about the whole ordeal.

“So instead of escaping, you decided it would be a good idea to go to an equally terrible place.”

“I’ve heard they’re fairly kind to us over there. Anyway, if I was to escape, I would be stranded in a different country with no money, no identity, and no way of interacting with people.” Now that he thinks about it, the man does have an accent. Why did he not notice that before? 

Instead of dwelling on the incongruities (always a bad idea), he holds out a hand. “I’m Sapnap.”

The man grins and shakes it firmly. “George. Mind if I join you on your sing-along?”

Sapnap pales. “Ohhhhhh no I made you suffer through 343 verses. That’s basically a war crime.”

“Who hasn’t committed a war crime once or twice?”

\---------

Sapnap stands in front of a protective screen. There’s no one on the other side. It’s been twenty minutes. 

The first day is not going great.

As he’s turning to leave, a man flies past him. He darts over to the door, flings it open, and seats himself behind the glass in a tumbling rush. Sapnap stares blankly first at the man, then at the door now gently swinging closed.  _ It wasn’t even locked? _

The man spins around in his chair once and orients himself to face Sapnap, a friendly smile on his face. “Hi, sorry for being late, I’m Karl! What’s your name?”

“Uh. Sapnap?”

Karl taps his fingers together thoughtfully. “Sapnap, Sapnap…oh right!” He reaches to the side and pulls out a single taser, sliding it under the screen. It’s got a sticky note with his name written on it in all caps. “It’s more for formalities. As long as you’re cool, there shouldn’t really be a problem.” He squints suspiciously. “You’re cool, right?”

“I’m the coolest.”

Karl breaks out into a smile again. “Yeah, I think we’re gonna get along. Come on, I’ll show you around.”

Before he can leave the little office, Sapnap stops him. “You wouldn’t happen to have a spare lighter, would you?”

“Sure. What color do you want?”

Time to begin again.

**Author's Note:**

> this is probably my second favorite out of this whole series so far, so i hope you enjoyed it as well! :>
> 
> as usual, credit for this au goes to @157-bees. did you know ve is currently in triple jail? it's true!
> 
> you can also find me on tumblr @iridiumphoenix if you're so inclined, it's mainly memes there. if you have anything you want to see in this series, let me know!
> 
> next up (probably): a short scene from an even darker timeline


End file.
